Weekly jobless claims hit nine-month high.

[Sbane]

Hmmm.....maybe we need more govt?

Precisely.  The government is not creating jobs.  That is what we need it to do.

Government does not exist to create jobs, what its to do is create the environment for jobs to be created in the private sector.

I agree. This is why the government needs to create demand in the economy, so that companies will invest their cash into utilizing more capacity.

[Sbane]

Hmmm.....maybe we need more govt?

Precisely.  The government is not creating jobs.  That is what we need it to do.

Government does not exist to create jobs, what its to do is create the environment for jobs to be created in the private sector.

I agree. This is why the government needs to create demand in the economy, so that companies will invest their cash into utilizing more capacity.

But Opebo told me we already had too much capacity. I am so confused now. I need to take a toke.

The capacity is already there (in terms of plants, office parks etc.) in many cases, but they are not operating at full capacity. And the reason for that is that companies just don't need to produce that much to meet today's level of demand. Since companies have already cut back they are doing very well financially, but it's leading to massive unemployment. So the solution to me seems to be to somehow increase demand so that companies start using their cash to invest more in manpower, as well as increase capacity when needed.

[Sbane]

Now how can the govt create demand without going after and interfering with business?

Some ways I can think of is to increase government hiring for things that are needed. So the government should hire more (or give contractors money to hire) to build roads, bridges, sewers and other infrastructure projects. They should double the border patrol so that more Americans have jobs, plus we mitigate the wage deflating effect of low skill immigration. We start giving incentives to keep jobs in America, and get rid of any perverse incentives to outsource. These are a few of the things the government could do without negatively impacting business (actually a lot of private companies would be helped due to this).